Title: The past, present, and future of service recovery: a bibliometric analysis

Authors: Sayan Banerjee; Anil Verma

Addresses: VIT Business School, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore-632014, Tamil Nadu, India ' VIT Business School, Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore-632014, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: Understanding the progress trajectories of service recovery in the academic context is highly quintessential for services marketing research and practice. This research presents an extensive bibliometric analysis of service recovery and its progress over the years. The sample utilised in this enquiry comprised of 1,066 documents gathered from the Scopus database. It was examined with techniques like performance analysis, co-citation analysis, keyword co-occurrence analysis, and thematic analysis. The performance analysis was conducted to examine the contributions of various research constituents like authors, countries, sources, and affiliations. The co-citation analysis provided an introspective view of the extant literature that forms the base for the enhancement of the service recovery research field. The keyword co-occurrence and thematic analysis furnishes information pertaining to the research themes within the purview of service recovery that has been addressed so far.

Keywords: service recovery; bibliometric analysis; bibliometrix; keyword analysis; conceptual structure; thematic analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSOM.2026.152948

International Journal of Services and Operations Management, 2026 Vol.53 No.4, pp.417 - 438

Received: 20 Sep 2023
Accepted: 24 Sep 2023
Published online: 17 Apr 2026 *

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